Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday January 11, 2008 @06:27PM
from the seemingly-easy-choice dept.

statemachine writes to mention that the USDA and farmers took part in a 5-year study of switchgrass, a grass native to North America. The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent. "But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. 'To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,' he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. 'Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber.'"

However switch grass can be farmed on less desirable farmland than corn, which leads me to believe that it will become a cash crop. This is just a preliminary strain of the grass and this experiment was to establish a baseline for future comparison. Something this heavily modified genetically I would not want to eat anyway so its a moot point.

IANA Biochemist, but it seems to me like switchgrass should take a back seat to Jatropha [wikipedia.org]? Jatropha would seem to ge the nod because not only does it grow in poor soil conditions, it already has a high oil content.
Nor do we have to worry about any GE going on, as it isn't an edible crop. (Although its toxicity may pose other problems.)

Jatropha will not grow in the bulk of the US landmass, it is a subtropical plant and can only tolerate a few light frosts. I looked into it for a fuel crop here and even this being Georgia, we are too far north.

I agree with the other poster, either switchgrass or industrial hemp are better targets for exploitation for biofuels using marginal land in most areas of the US.

Sugar beets have a high sugar content(therefore can make more EtOH), and can grow in fairly cold, adverse environments. Grows quite well in North America. Corn is being used because of the lobbying effort of Archer-Daniel Midland, a world leader in processing corn, wheat, soybeans. Corn is a lousy product to make ethanol.

Ethanol yield/per acre for sugar beets is about 2x times that of corn, and about 25% higher than sugar cane.Sugar cane is more efficiently made into ethanol yielding 8 times as much energy as required to make it, sugar beets only about twice. Corn is nearly an even output.

I agree with you on the sugar beets, but sort of disagree on the "why" of corn right now. The primary reason for the corn is because that is what we have the highest numbers of big farmers set up to grow with the equipment at hand, and that stuff just ain't cheap. Corn and soybeans, ethanol and biodiesel. We are in a transition stage now to all the various biofuels, so I wouldn't worry about it being corn forever, it just happens to be the handiest one we have right now. We are still at the 286 level with biofuels, it will get better, and in probably a roughly similar time frame.

There are two good positives here, energy demands are just always going to be going up,so this biofuels idea will be continued to be worked on, and farmers love to farm, because it is a hard job, and if they didn't love it, they wouldn't do it, there are any number of easier ways to make a buck. So it will work out.

In fact, a ton of the good innovations and tweaking with biofuels are going on right now in real world deployments directly on farms for fuel use on-site, because they are so tied to energy availability and costs. They are the serious beta tester devs right now for all of this...so I say support them in general terms, let them sort this out better, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Society is right now asking a minuscule percentage of the population to double their output, in two critical areas, food and now they are going to be tasked with being the liquid energy producers as well. This is an incredibly HUGE undertaking, and I think it is more than fair that the rest of society, who will be the primary beneficiaries of the food and now energy production, be prepared to cut loose a few dollars for this effort, to offer a bit of understanding and acceptance of the size of these projects in total and realize there will be failures as well as successes along this new energy path, and to give them a chance to tweak it out better without a lot of condemnation and outright dissin'.

No other segment of our society has been tasked with a doubling or tripling of their projected work load en masse like the farmers have now accepted to attempt. The closest historical parallel we have would the durable goods manufacturers-with a much higher workforce total and much higher governmental support structure- who had to gear up and run triple time, plus alter product lines drastically, for the world war 2 effort. The coming transition to mostly biofuels as conventional petroleum sources become more iffy and more dear, is at least of such a scale the way it is being projected now.

I would be in favor of more algae research and deployment, but not necessarily in the oceans but in controlled pools/tanks in the desert, in combination with some some solar and geo thermal and perhaps very large greenhouses. And mostly because they will most likely go for genetically modified algae and I wouldn't want to chance such a crop going wild with unintended consequences. I also think they could control it better in pools or tanks than in the wide open ocean. I've worked on the ocean before, it ain

if we made giant algae pools on the surface of the oceans to make bio-diesel

We have pretty much done most of the damage that will be done buy making the prairies into farmland, why would we destroy the ecosystem of thousands of acres of ocean as well? The only real reason we have been using corn, is that there is so damn much corn sitting around this country because of the ridiculous corn subsidies. Maybe if switchgrass becomes the new cash crop those subsidies will shrike in favor of the new fuel source

Maybe this is restating what you've said, but the nice thing about switchgrass instead of corn is that the switchgrass frees up or releases from captivity the fields earmarked for use as corn-for -fuel use. This means that the recent uptick in crops-to-store-to-consumer pricing/cost should settle down. There was a big fear (in some quarters) that the cost of some foods related to/around corn/corn oils/etc would skyrocket.But, an aside: I think all I need to do is listen to NPR/TOTN/Science Friday, SciAm, et

All the major food sources have been "heavily modified genetically".It's called selective breeding/pollination.Direct gene manipulation is pretty much the same thing, but faster and more precise.

Bullshit. Utterly and willfully ignorant bullshit.

First off, we are seeing cross-species gene transplants, that does not ever happen naturally. But go ahead and forget about that issue since it is not so widespread yet.

The other problem is exactly what you wrote -- faster changes. Faster change mean faster mistakes and less chance to catch non-obvious mistakes. With selective breeding you get multiple generations worth of time to discover problems with a new breed, long before it enters mainstream consumption. With gene-splicing a wholesale change can be made across thousands, even hundreds of thousands of animals/plants within the span of one generation.

Keep in mind that ethanol doesn't require the nitrogenous components, so most of the "waste" can be put back on the fields.

Yes, there will be loss, but it's not anywhere near as bad as some make out. Any decent organic farmer can lecture for hours on the wonders of compost, and as long as the farmers are careful about irrigation runoff, it isn't too bad.

It is also considered inedible for the most part unless, assuming you're a man, you like having high estrogen levels among other things. The Chinese didn't consider it worthy of eating until they learned to ferment it, and those guys back then would eat fucking ANYTHING so that says a lot!!

Hemp seed is actually really healthy [nutiva.com] and contains good amounts of all essential amino acids (and so is high in protein). It provides some iron, good amounts of manganese and magnesium, and is also a good source of omega-3 and -6 fatty acids. Hemp seeds are good for salad toppings, baking, etc (think multi-grain bread). Hemp oil is also highly nutritious and can be used as other vegetable oils are.

It's a shame that prohibition drives the seed prices through the roof.

Hemp oil is also highly nutritious and can be used as other vegetable oils are....and for some odd reason, an hour after dinner you get this uncontrollable urge to eat a LOT of Twinkies.
(I know, I know... but I couldn't pass up the chance to say that).

Yeah, good one, that's hilarious. Perpetuating utterly false misinformation that keeps a highly useful and sustainable crop from being legal is SO funny. If that is clever, I've got another one for you:

At most alternative grocery stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc) you can buy roasted hemp nuts, which are a similar food to shelled sunflower seeds. Hemp seeds have high protein and fat content, so you can use hemp oil in places you would use, say, olive oil; and with all the protein in them, they can be used to make many of the things that we currently use soybeans for.

Growing corn gets you fuel, OR food. Farms aren't going to use the same crop to produce fuel and food-- they'll produce one or the other.
Also, should your fuel sources be competing with your food sources?

Manufacture of corn ethanol yields fuel and distillers dried grain (DDGs). DDGs are heavily sought after for animal feed. So technically, you do get food and fuel. Is ethanol really competing with the food supply? The same UN officials complain that US subsidies make grain too cheap for the third world to compete against, and then turn around and complain that increased ethanol makes grain too expensive for the third world to purchase? It seems that the experts can't discern between whether too much or too little corn is being produced.

There is good logic in the argument that tying food production to fuel production is a bad idea. However, the argument that food prices are rising because of ethanol production ignores the complexity of the equation. Corn production and price is tied to fuel production regardless of whether ethanol is added to the equation. Adding ethanol to the equation, corn production is actually stimulated. Also, one would expect some form of a fuel price decrease (on a macro level) with the replacement of gasoline with ethanol. Therefore, there are numerous variables to account for in analyzing the effects of ethanol on food and fuel price and production. It is simplistic to assume that ethanol production is the sole source of rising corn prices.

Additionally, cellulosic ethanol is not a silver bullet. Encouraging the planting of high performing switch grass can have a few harmful impacts. Switch grass can be planted where other crops cannot. Some of this unplantable land is wetland which is important as habitat and a filter for our water supply. Also, if the economics work, switch grass may also displace food production.

Finally, the headline "switchgrass makes better ethanol than corn" is misleading because it conveys the idea that this is some kind of revelation. The real news is the number the study has yielded. However, the article massacres the actual comparison. The article's quote is: "This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies." Without careful reading, it appears that the writer is saying that corn ethanol creates an energy deficit, this isn't true. The SA writer makes things confusing by comparing the actual energy produced by switchgrass ethanol with the amount of energy produced in excess of the input for corn ethanol. The writer of the SA article is comparing apples to oranges and I am skeptical of the motives of journalists that play with numbers. Also, don't forget that cellulosic ethanol can also come from corn. Plants in the Midwest have begun to to add stalks and husks to the ethanol process in the past two years. I really don't care where ethanol comes from, I think its a good idea. But the debate should not be a shadow game of massaged numbers.

>Growing corn gets you fuel, OR food. Farms aren't going to use the>same crop to produce fuel and food-- they'll produce one or the other.

I am a farmer, and I'm right in the middle of this. I'm hoping to profit nicely from ethanol demand.

The corn I grow is a commodity. I really don't care if the buyer uses it for food or ethanol production. I store it in my grain bins and sell it when the price is right.

Corn is a nicely flexible commodity. I like it.

>Also, should your fuel sources be competing>with your food sources?

It doesn't really matter. We farmers can grow extreme amounts of corn without much effort. We're so good at it, we've had to hold ourselves back on production for decades.

Switchgrass, on the other hand, doesn't have much use other than (potentially) as fuel. I sure don't want to eat it. I could grow it quite easily if the market demands it, but I'd need to tool up with different equipment and farming techniques. It's a real hassle to bale and store hay...I don't expect switchgrass would be much different. The root system created by switchgrass would make a field hell to get back to where I could plant corn again if it were needed for food.

I can't think of any marginal land where growing switchgrass would make much sense, either. If it's not growing corn, I've got better uses for it, even if it is only grazing land for livestock.

>Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.

Don't get me started on that damn ditchweed. It's rough on equipment. My family tried it years ago when it was needed during the wars. We're still trying to reclaim land lost to it. You can't eat it, and you sure as hell can't smoke it. About the only decent thing I can say about it is it's good for erosion control. That's why it's called ditchweed.

except that many hops farmers have switched from farming hops on their premium farm land, to farming inefficient corn, thus driving up the price of beer.

Mass produced domestic beer IS going up in price, but this is not really because of the hop shortage. The hop shortage is severely affecting the homebrew and microbrew markets, but the big brewers don't use much hops, if any, in their brews. Instead they use isomerized alpha acid, a synthetic version of one of the major hop bittering compounds. Sam Adam

Switchgrass gets you more ethanol than corn sure, but that's all you get. Growing corn gets you fuel and food. Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.

Who cares, ethanol in general is not a good long term solutions to the energy crisis (emphasis on good, it could be a solution, but it has to many flaws).
Renewable energy sources like water, sun, and wind power could be good long term solutions but the still need a lot of work and increases of effectiveness to reach that point. Nuclear could do the job

Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's a way to store energy. It is not and will never be a solution to any energy crisis, it just pushes that energy crisis up to the level of mass electricity generation. It may be useful for alleviating pollution problems in dense urban areas because, similar to a battery, it doesn't pollute where it's consumed. Hydrogen isn't competing against ethanol, solar, water, wind, coal and nuclear power plants for power generation, it's competing against electric batteries for use in cars (I think the advantage over batteries is that they're better suited to long-range driving, which people are accustomed to in gas cars, but I'm no expert).

Ethanol, on the other hand, takes much of its energy input from the sun. It could thus contribute to solving the energy crisis. It can also do so on the quick and on the cheap, since we have lots of experience utilizing the energy stored in it. Its use creates pollution where it's consumed, which is unfortunate for people like me that live in major cities.

What do you think are the flaws inherent in ethanol that make it a necessarily bad energy solution? The worst things I've heard is that (when made from corn) it struggles to yield net-positive energy, and that it pollutes at point of use. To me, if the problem of efficiency is solved ethanol seems that it could be a source of power for cars in a generation.

The other power sources you mention, wind, solar and nuclear, are (along with coal and oil) currently sources for electricity generation. They're competing for something totally different. I am not really an expert on this, but I'd guess based on this that gasoline and ethanol aren't as efficient for mass electricity generation; if this is true, then yes, the true energy solution is to centralize generation in big, efficient power plants and use electricity and fuel cells at point of use.

Switchgrass just got pwned by a quick google. [worldwatch.org] Thats right, algae all the way. Just need to spend a bit of time developing the technologies to harvest it agriculturally because we've had little reason to do so earlier. Couple this to a CO2 producing coal plant and you've got a gold mine. Ofcourse, someone needs to make the initial investment. ..perhaps oil companies?

Yes, but we're most likely talking about decades here.For example, if you cut the price of bio/petro diesel in half relative to gasoline, I could easily see 50% of the vehicles on the road being diesel within 5 years.

A diesel-electric hybrid would be capable of some scary efficiency and low emissions. Most pollution from diesels are from them operating out of their ideal powerband.

It's easy to design a diesel engine optimized for a constant RPM and load that'll last halfway to forever that gets high effici

Growing corn gets you food and fuel? No. Growing corn gets you food or fuel not both. And guess what, government subsidy making it more profitable to grow corn for fuel means corn prices are up since there is less suply available. This means feed for livestock goes up which means more expensive beef/etc. A one trick pony is what we need at this point. Something that is much more practical/efficient, and that won't have significant unintended economic impact.

The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent.

This means that corn gets you negative amounts of fuel (you'll use more farming it than you'll get out of farming it), while switchgrass gets you fuel.

The only reason corn has been chosen as the main crop for getting ethanol in the US is because of the strong cron lobby. It really isn't a feasible energy *source*, since it uses more energy than it produces.

1. Growing corn gets you food OR fuel, not both.2. Corn is subsidized, thus its true costs are hidden from us.3. Corn must be re-planted every year from seeds. Switchgrass is a perennial whose 'produce' can be harvested from the same plant each year.

There is leftover grain after fermentation. It's called Distiller's Grain and it makes a good livestock feed (due to the vitamins in the yeast, perhaps?). Unfortunately, due to its moisture content, it cannot be stored for very long or transported very far, so a lot of it goes to waste.

AFAIK it's a different type of corn they use for ethanol, and when you they use corn for ethanol, they use ALL of it.

Generally speaking, it's the same corn used for feeding livestock and human consumption. There isn't anything special about it...right now anyway. You are correct that once the corn is used, it is mostly starch depleted. The used "brewer's grain" can be dried and fed to livestock, but its done to supplement the vitamin/mineral intake for the livestock, not so much as being the primary "energy" food (carbohydrates), which comes from other sources, such as hay/silage/green feed.

There are methods in the works to use leftover fiber from corn or other plant based waste as fuel, but these are just methods of recycling waste products, not significant energy producers.

Almost anything is better than corn. Corn is only popular in the US because corn farming has a powerful lobby. Sugarcane and practically anything else commonly used to produce ethanol is better than corn.

Actually, a major reason why high fructose corn syrup is the sweetener of choice for many American food products is that the U.S. sugar lobby is so strong. Protectionist trade agreements and price floors ensure that Americans pay about double the average world price for sugar, so it's far less expensive to use HFCS than cane sugar.

The sugar price supports paradoxically play a big role in hurting Hawaii's sugar industry. The price floor means that the minimum price for sugar from Florida, Louisiana, and Texas is the same as that for Hawaii, so producers in those states make just as much money for their sugar, but have much lower costs for labor and transportation. The supports are also a significant incentive to producers in those other states to produce as much as they can, which negates Hawaii's dramatic per-acre productivity advantage.

That is so funny that I almost fell out of my seat. Corn prices have stayed fairly constant for the past three decades. I am not talking about being adjusted for inflation. If the corn farmers have a powerful lobby then that must mean that lobbiest truly have no power at all. (not the case)

If you take the price that corn sold for in the 1970s and adjusted for inflation, corn should be selling for above $10/bushel today. The prices of corn and other commodities ha

Because it's not the corn farmers doing the lobbying, it's the industrial food corporations. Corn subsidies remove the price floor for corn, so that overfarming drives prices down below the cost of production without causing the market to implode. Conagra, Cargill and Tyson buy up the cheap corn and use it to manufacture the ubiquitous processed foods we find in the supermarket, and feed it to cows and chickens (who are not evolutionarily adapted to it) in concentrated feedlots so that we can have the hyper-abundance of diseased meat we've grown accustomed to.

The other major reason is to offset how cheap labor is throughout the world. In Mexico a farmer doesnt have to spend $4000/acre for his land, or pay his workers nearly what a US farmer makes for a living. The theory is that these subsidies are needed to help US farmers against this fact, to help combat the agricultural equivelent of "outsourcing" our farming jobs.

That's the problem. Cheap farm labour shouldn't be 'offset' -- let comparative advantage do the work. I'm all for the outsourcing of farming jobs, because why should American farmers receive any kind of special privilege? It's not an unalienable entitlement to be able to farm for a living. And at any rate, farming in this country is mostly the purview of agribusinesses such as ADM and ConAgra. If people in this country want to farm, then they should offer produce (such as no-till or novel varieties of crop) that people are willing to pay a premium for. But stop bitching because Uncle Jim Bob in Iowa is being underpriced by some peasant in Bolivia -- the Bolivian has just as much right as Jim Bob to eke an existence from the soil.

What in the world makes you think nobody would produce corn here if it weren't subsidised? There's simply no better place to grow it than the midwest. Without subsidies it would simply be more expensive in a direct fashion, rather than through taxation.

That is so funny that I almost fell out of my seat. Corn prices have stayed fairly constant for the past three decades. I am not talking about being adjusted for inflation. If the corn farmers have a powerful lobby then that must mean that lobbiest truly have no power at all. (not the case)

Congratulations, you are a master of the non sequiter. The price of corn is not a good measurement of the power of the agribusiness lobby -- what you want to measure is how much influence they have over legislators. It's difficult to measure influence directly, of course, but what can be objectively measured is how much money agribusiness donates to politicians. And there we find that in the last 20 years or so, agribusiness has donated a total of 415 million dollars [opensecrets.org]. To put that in perspective, that is over three times the amount donated by defense lobbyists [opensecrets.org] in the same time period, and I don't think anyone would scoff at the influence of defense lobbyists on our government. So yes, I'd say the agribusiness sector (note I deliberately don't say "farmers" because what we are talking about here are massive farming corporations like Archer Daniels Midland [admworld.com], not mom and pop and their 40 acres) has plenty of influence in Washington. Which is of course why so many government handouts are going to corn-based ethanol, even though corn is clearly one of the least efficient sources for that product.

That is so funny that I almost fell out of my seat. Corn prices have stayed fairly constant for the past three decades.

You must have a rather slippery seat.

The 2002 Farm Bill guarantees corn farmers a price of $2.60 per bushel in 2002-2003 and $2.63
per bushel in 2004-2007 for the corn that they produce. In order to realize this price, corn
farmers are eligible to receive a combination of direct payments, loans, and counter-cyclical
payments.

Fixed Direct Payments: Set at a fixed rate of $.28 per bushel for crop years 2002-2007. These
payments are based on historic crop yields, so farmers are not obligated to grow any crop in
order to receive benefits. Since these payments increase in direct proportion to the acreage and
yield of eligible crops planted, they encourage larger tracts of land to be used for corn
cultivation.

Loans: The marketing assistance loan program and the loan deficiency payment program work
to bring the price of corn up above $1.98 per bushel in 2002-2003, and $1.95 per bushel in 2004-
2007. These non-recourse loans allow the producer to choose when and how much of the loan
they are going to pay back. They skew market signals by acting as a price floor for current
production and encourage overproduction.
Counter-Cyclical Payments: If the price of corn is still below the $2.63 target, counter-cyclical
payments are used. They work in the same way as direct payments, and are based upon
historical crop acreage and yield instead of current production. Again, this means that producers
do not have to produce in order to receive payments.

Conclusion:
Corn production is the most heavily subsidized commodity in the United States today. Payments
are extremely concentrated and benefits flow overwhelmingly to corporate agribusiness. Current
government policy is pumping up the bottom line of modern, profitable corporations and leaving
the taxpayer to foot the bill.

That is so funny that I almost fell out of my seat. Corn prices have stayed fairly constant for the past three decades. If the corn farmers have a powerful lobby then that must mean that lobbiest truly have no power at all.

Right, if only those lobbyists could figure out a way to get the government to pay farmers for growing corn, ignoring market forces & rewarding particularly big corporate farms. Maybe even figure out a way to have the gov't spend billions [grist.org] of dollars supporting a crop that is overgrown relative to demand. Like maybe some kind of farm subsidy. [ewg.org] If only those lobbyists were powerful enough to get that [freetrade.org] done [nytimes.com].

The only reason corn is being used now is because it is plentiful and doesnt take any major changes to the current agricultural industry to start using for ethanol.

And the only reason it is plentiful is because the federal gov't has been paying farmers to grow more corn than needed. Corn is energetically a horrible crop to use for ethanol production (as TFA points out).

> The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent

"The polling firm found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver only 0.54% of the voter cast in the states capable of producing it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can yield around 24% of the votes cast in the states that produce it."

It's not about EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Investment), it's about PEOPI (Politicians Elected On Pork Invested).

Ethanol is a good way to extend our comfortable behavior with little downside.

Except it's not, really. If it was, I'd be a much bigger fan. But it's really just a red herring; a way of pulling the wool over the public's eyes, continuing to empower the oil companies, while also pumping some taxpayer dollars into the agribusiness and farm lobbies.

I've only looked at corn ethanol in much detail, but that stuff requires MORE oil to produce, per unit of burnable energy (that you can actually pump into your car), than gasoline does. It gets fertilized with oil, harvested with tractors that run on oil, transported with oil... by the time it gets to your tank, it would have been better just to use the stupid oil to begin with. At least the oil companies have an incentive, when they crack petroleum to make gasoline directly, to do it efficiently. When you're going oil->fertilizer->corn->ethanol->gasohol, with tons of subsidies along the way, the efficiency motive gets lost. It's not even carbon neutral -- it just makes you think it's carbon-neutral (and might let you *call* it that, depending on who's doing the accounting).

Maybe switchgrass is a little better than corn, but I have some serious reservations, and this study doesn't dispel them (considered how deep in the pockets of ADM and the oil companies the government is). Show me a large-scale ethanol process, sunlight-to-tank, that doesn't take petroleum as an input and then I'll be much more impressed. So far I haven't seen one that seems practical.

I've only looked at corn ethanol in much detail, but that stuff requires MORE oil to produce, per unit of burnable energy (that you can actually pump into your car), than gasoline does. It gets fertilized with oil, harvested with tractors that run on oil, transported with oil... by the time it gets to your tank, it would have been better just to use the stupid oil to begin with.

That's total nonsense. Not all energy is oil!

Take a look at the studies on ethanol - Pimental's, for example. About 90% of t

Switchfoot makes better music than Korn, too, but such opinion is no more revolutionary than the one in the article.

Of course it's not more revolutionary. Neither band has performed a song that has been used in a Dance Dance Revolution game or any game for the Wii (nee Revolution) game console, as far as I can tell.

It's true that corn is a pretty poor feedstock for ethanol generation. But I think most people (farmer subsidy lovers) think that ethanol has come into focus because of its potential as a fuel *replacement* for gasoline.

Let me remind you why we have a demand for ethanol in the first place: a replacement for MTBE [wikipedia.org], a gasoline anti-knock additive (letting the engine run at higher compression ratios, and thus more efficiently) which was found to be leeching into groundwater and concentrating. MTBE is being phased out, and ethanol is a replacement chemical. Whether or not ethanol will be used as an energy source is irrelevant. It's critical today as a fuel additive for gasoline. Beyond that, it's a pretty inefficient energy carrier. Switchgrass may do better, but we're not there yet.

If I recall correctly, Bush mentioned a lot of good common sense things for energy back then, switchgrass was only one of the things mentioned. Didn't Bush also mention nuclear power plants? I wonder when people will also wake up to that idea again. I know here in California, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has tried to put in bills for lifting the restrictions on nuclear power in California. So far, no luck.

Technically speaking, the poster/article should say 'human-provided' energy. After, if switchgrass took in X amount of energy and produced 540% of X in output, that would break the laws of thermodynamics.Also of consideration is what is the energy yield per acre? Of course, corn at 24% would be a total loser ($1 of energy provides $.24 of energy), but even at 540%, switch grass might not be the most economical method based on land used. Consider if you supply an acre of switch grass with 1 watt of power and

No he's not. The whole argument about efficiency in the first place is about the power it takes to convert the plant into ethanol, in this case it takes much less energy to convert switchgrass into the same amount of ethanol. However, if it takes one acre of switchgrass to get one quart of ethanol, it might not be worth the investment if there's another plant with a lower efficiency but 5x the yield per acre. The article even mentions that they still need to do some work on increasing the yield of switchgra

This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.

If I'm interpreting this right, it means corn ethanol is returning 125%, not 24% as the summary implies. Also, switchgrass requires refineries that can deal with cellulose, which we don't have. (Not that I'm saying that switchgrass or miscanthus based ethanol is a bad idea, just that the summary is misleading.)

For all the people who are complaining about the summary/headline, please know that it is hard to fit all of the math in the headline. Please read the article for that. ScuttleMonkey redid my headline (although slightly more correct, he made it more vague).

For those who say there aren't refineries, ScuttleMonkey took out my quotes and put different ones in. I said the DoE is partially funding new refineries, the first of which will come online in Georgia -- also in the fine article.

Although I credit and thank ScuttleMonkey for greenlighting my submission whereas it was flatly ignored yesterday when I submitted it, please complain about his editing, and not my original content, if you feel the summary was vague or had omissions. You can compare both if you read the firehose submission (complain to me if you don't like that one).

Why are we even worrying about Ethanol? Sure we may need better fuels then oil however here in the US we have massive reserves of it in Alaska where we cannot drill for oil there. Also, if we take out government grants and the like, Ethanol based on Corn (and chances are switchgrass) will never be more then minor fixes that could end up being more expensive. We have lots of hydrogen and sunlight, they are free and can be used as power sources, we have lots of oil. Corn and switchgrass though we don't have m

That means the US uses around 5.4 billion barrels of oil per year. If you buy the pro-driller propaganda, ANWR is AT BEST, 3 years worth of supply. If you took the highest estimate of oil in the ground and assumed the magically ability to extract all 30 billion barrels -- that's 6 years of supply.

ANWR is just another method to enrich Cheney -- like the logic of paying contractor truck drivers 120k per year to drive truck in Iraq when a regular soldier makes about 1/6th of that. But that's another tale.

In my view, the better plan is to consider ANWR to be "money in the bank". Oil price increases are just starting. We'd be better off sitting on it for 50 years because by then, we'll be lamenting the days oil only cost $90-100 per barrel.

however here in the US we have massive reserves of it in Alaska where we cannot drill for oil there.

The total proven reserves in ANWR are about 10 billion barrels [mediamatters.org]. Our daily consumption of petroleum is about 20,687,000 barrels/day [doe.gov]. Doing the math, that means the entire ANWR reserve discovered so far would give us about 10.4 billion / 20 687 000 = 502.731184 days of petroleum.

Unfortunately, I don't see any candidates supporting the "Big Switchgrass" lobby (lol) with federal grants and subsidies.

The government is *ALWAYS* ten years late on supporting technology, and usually picks the wrong one. Same situation with PV, hybrid cars, and nuclear power... about the time some lobbyist gets enough "representatives" to sign on to some legislation that makes their life easy, a new start-up or breakthrough makes them obsolete.

One more reason to vote for someone who believes that open markets will drive innovation a lot faster than corporate/agricultural welfare, and that states can be more responsive when government needs to have a role.

I know, I'm yet another rabid Ron Paul supporter. But at least if we elect him, hemp will have a chance to compete with switchgrass. Which will be great, except your car will have the munchies and will insist on calling you "dude" and "bro" when your door is ajar.;)

When your application doesn't work, refactor the code.When the government doesn't work, refactor the system.

This has been circulating around the intarwebs for a few days now, so it spurred me to do some background reading already.

Corn has higher amounts of the simpler sugars that bacteria need to work on to produce the ethanol. Switchgrass and other cellulosic feedstocks, which are largely equivalent in feasbility in general terms, have those sugars bound up in...you guessed it...cellulose. Because of this it requires much more processing prior to fermentation. There are several ways to do this with varying costs and efficiencies, but at the very least is technically viable.

However, this pre-processing and the fact that large-scale cellulosic ethanol production is a new technology means the initial costs are higher. According to Wikipedia (with original sources referenced), corn ethanol plants cost about $1-3 per gallon of annual capacity to construct. The first round of large scale cellulosic ethanol plants now under construction are billed about $7 per gallon of annual capacity. Production costs are expected to run about $2.25 per gallon initially, or about $125 per barrel of oil energy equivalent.

However, as the method is proven, that cost is expected to come down. About $350 million of cost is also being funded by the federal government under the new energy plan. Also, the cost of the feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production is much lower, as it can use switchgrass as mentioned in the summary, corn stover, wood chips, or just about anything else containing plant matter, where as the corn method requires corn (duh), and thus competes with food production.

Of course, the article makes the energy-return benefit over corn ethanol obvious. Elsewhere it has been estimated that cellulosic ethanol production could account for 30% of our transportation energy needs in a couple decades. Obviously far short of weaning us off foreign oil, but a start nonetheless. However, an added benefit of using grasses like switchgrass is the fields don't have to be replanted every year, reducing soil depletion and erosion.

I got into a conversation about alternative energies over the holidays with a friend of mine who has her PhD in something Agricultural Science related from Purdue, and when the conversation went to ethanol she informed me that apparently there's a much better alternative in butanol. According to the first link I've provided, Butanol is both a "cleaner" fuel source than ethanol and has a higher energy content (110,000 Btu per gallon for butanol vs. 84,000 Btu per gallon for ethanol, for reference gasoline is 115,000 Btu per gallon). It requires little to no modification of existing engines and can be shipped through existing fuel pipelines. Historically it's been considered less viable than ethanol because of relatively higher production cost.

This anecdote pertains specifically to biodiesel, but among friends surely we can discuss all kinds of biofuels?

The other day I saw a diesel Passat with this bumper sticker, and I just wanted to rant to a crowd that would understand:

BIODIESELThe 100% solutionKyoto compliant, carbon neutral, OPEC free

I wanted to run him off the road and give him a math lesson as he lay torn and bleeding in a ditch. If we covered every square centimeter of arable land in the US with the most magical crop available, it could not make enough fuel for us to be OPEC free. Not by a LONG shot. And we need to grow food, too!

Biofuels can be a great part of a solution. They are not a solution by themselves. But some people are driving around believing that "they" are stopping us from deploying perfect solution. I'm sorry, Passat man... It isn't that simple. I beg of you, do the math and reduce the scope of your conspiracy theories. The truth is bad enough.

The production of fuel from dead dinosaurs pulls carbon from the ground. The production of fuel from plants pulls carbon from the air.

...which is then put right back into the air when burned in cars.

Creation of ethanol also requires a great deal of heat and electricity. Most of that electricity is from coal-powered plants, and the heat comes from burning excess material, which continue to put carbon back in the air and pull carbon from the ground.

Check out this graphic [nationalgeographic.com] for a comparison of the various biofuels. Click the Energy Balance tab to see input vs. output of carbon.

After the fuel is burnt, you end up with the same amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. OTOH, with petrofuels, you end up with more CO2 than you started with.

Most of that electricity is from coal-powered plants

At the moment, yes. But there's little reason to believe that will always be the case, especially with the advances in wind, solar and tidal power, coupled with increased intrest in Nuclear power.

the heat comes from burning excess material, which continue to put carbon back in the air and pull carbon from the ground

The excess material was created by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. So burning it is still carbon-neutral.

Click the Energy Balance tab to see input vs. output of carbon.

I'm not sure what the heck you're talking about here. The Energy Balance tab has nothing to do with carbon. It's comparing the energy of the final fuel to the energy required to make it. Energy is energy in that graphic, whether the energy comes from oil or from a nuclear reactor.

Now, if you're talking about the CO2 tab, that one actually does deal with carbon. However, there's several sources of ethanol, so it's not clear what you're referring to. The worst being corn at 22% reduction, and best being celluose at 91%

When you replace oil with ethanol, you stop using carbon that was fixed a long time in the past (and thus did not contribute to present levels of co2), and instead use carbon that was fixed in the last growing cycle. The net co2 added to the atmosphere in a year is zero, because the corn/switchgrass has to fix the co2 before you can later release it in the burn cycle.

The plants remove exactly the same amount of CO2 during their growth as is liberated by burning the resulting ethanol, and actually the same as would be released if the plant died and decomposed naturally.The theory behind the whole thing is simply to avoid adding more carbon from underground sources into the atmosphere/biosphere.

Personally, I believe the whole warming thing is a bunch of total bullshit based on an incomplete and possibly inaccurate data set, since temps haven't risen in over a decade.

This really depends on what temperature statistic you're talking about. Global annual mean? That's actually fairly variable on a year-to-year basis, but it is certainly hasn't been going down much in the long-term lately. And then you have things like the accelerating melting of the arctic sea ice that make it pretty clear something is going on. While the details of end result is still up in the air, it's pretty idiotic to think you can more than double the concentration of a significant greenhouse gas with zero effect on climate.

Because you are no using hydrocarbon that are in carbon sinks [oil] that would almost never see the light of day had we not dug it up. By using something like cellulose or grains, you have a carbon cycle. You grow the plant, which takes carbon from the air to grow, becoming the carbon holder, then you use it, releasing the carbon. But when the next crop is grown, the plant uses the carbon you emitted using the fuel from the last crop.

Now, I am sure it is not a net-zero result, probably a net-gain in carbon, but you are at least using something that can take much of the carbon that is emitted for use back to make a new plant.

And IMHO, anything is better than using resource heavy and subsidy heavy corn for ethanol and bio-diesel.

The idea is to stop injecting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle; the carbon in biofuels comes from the atmosphere rather than underground deposits. Of course, ethanol is not the only biofuel hydrocarbon, just the most fashionable one at the moment.